Animated Atrocities 41/New Transcript
Caption:Some viewers may find this disturbing, viewer discretion is advised. Opening Theme Mr.Enter: '''If you've watched my time twister review, you know that I decided to come to terms with my anger. A lot of the times it has been unwarranted and I plan to rectify it as much as possible. Now I'm not going to review every single thing that I had to freakout over, that'd be totally ridiculous and take up way too much time, but I'm going to try to fix the things where I went above and beyond and certainly crossed the line indisputably, usually resulting in me attacking the writers. Otherwise I'm going to update reviews that are outdated where logic isn't entirely there or my arguments needed to be stronger, and let's start with perhaps my most infamous case of both of these: my "Pet Sitter Pat" review. One thing you're going to have to know though is that although I am going to try to stay calm reviewing these episodes again, my opinions by and large have not changed. "Pet Sitter Pat" is still my least favorite, or most hated, whatever you want to call it episode of Spongebob. When I originally saw it, I was so disgusted and enraged that I hastily made a review in less than four days in what turned out to be a badly made excuse to call out one of the writers personally. You could say that it was a dash of overreaction, it went all the way up to rebutting to his twitter feed and that led of people were harrasing him on twitter. Yeah let's get this out of the way don't do that. Like please don't do that that's not good guys that that's that's bad. I'll talk more about this after the actual review and the interest of being succinct, something I wasn't in the original review. Right now we've got to talk about what makes this episode personally offensive to me and dare I say horrible.This episode has a lot of problems, but there are three main ones: the first of these problems is that it's a blatant ripoff of one of the most infamous episodes of the show, "A Pal for Gary". You see, to me, no matter what you rip off directly, your product will almost inevitably be worse than what you're ripping off. Keep in mind this is different than continuing the style taking inspiration from or being a homage the rip-off is blatant and they're not trying to homage or anything. In "A Pal for Gary", Spongebob gets something to keep Gary company and it turns into a monster behind his back it's the same thing here but much more metaphorical I'll admit. The monster in this case is Patrick, and that brings up the other two main problems in this episode: Patrick's idiocy and Gary's torment. In "A Pal for Gary", SpongeBob's stupidity managed to piss off the most ardent spongebob defenders '''Caption:Spongebob blames Gary for chasing Puffy Fluffy away. I'm not lying And make it one of the most infamous episodes of the show. In a bizarre attempt to fix the episode it seems like they moved the stupidity to the character it was more believable in but in doing this, they ignored the other problem of "A Pal for Gary", and made it worse in this episode. In "A Pal for Gary", Gary was yelled at and repeatedly scared but he never seemed to come into physical harm. In this episode we see Gary's pain. It starts with Patrick opening Gary's food and eating in front of him, then he thinks it's top priority to get Gary a bath instead of feeding him. He carries Gary under his stinky armpits the sink and the fills the drain with snail food which dissolves. After Gary has been starved, Patrick chases him down with a flamethrower and threatens to dry him off with salt. The joke is that Patrick is so stupid, he nearly killed Gary with his incompetence. Needless to say I don't find it very funny. Finally he dries Gary off into this shriveled-up thing. How this plot usually works is that the babysitter from hell usually gets the tar beaten out of them in the end through a good dose of karma or revenge, and it hits all the right catharsis notes. However here they went way too far with Gary's torment. Yeah they try to beat up Patrick here and there but he never shows any sign of pain so it doesn't work slapstick doesn't work Caption:Yes, I know that they usually go too far in the OTHER direction, showing too much pain If the target isn't in pain. And the ending to the episode what tends to make or break these plots is one of the most infuriating segments. Spongebob comes in to find his house entirely destroyed and doesn't even seem to notice it. Not only that, but Gary is happy too. It's a special kind of insulting like it's one thing to pull away the sheets and say that "look Gary was never in any real danger we just played you", but Gary was clearly in danger up to and including his life being threatened all because Patrick was careless enough to let it happen. It's a special kind of sad that I believe that Patrick would actually do this. Ignoring the pre-movie episode "Dumped" where Patrick turned out to be better to Gary than Spongebob, this is the end result of flanderization. You see, when a character only has one trait that the writers focus on, they tend to make it more and more extreme. Now to prove the Patrick is still stupid, they need to show us that he's stupid enough to get someone else's pet killed. To add to that, Patrick is indignant to Spongebob when he's checking up on the snail that's nearly getting killed. It makes it frustrating to say the least. Patrick is supposed to be one of the good guys on the show, so in each episode, he needs to do something likable or get punished for doing something heinous. That's how it worked in pre movie with Mr.Krabs, that's how most shows work. If you want to have an asshole, fine. You must never let them succeed in their endeavors. Take a look at Eddy from Ed Edd n Eddy, or Ren Hoek from Ren and Stimpy. It helps build up sympathy with them. The plot may make more sense in "A Pal for Gary" but it's still a bit of a mess. This plot type has been done before and it has been done well, someone gets a horrible babysitter. Ignoring the fact that the babysitter is usually a new character that can be fitted to the plot there is another giant misstep. Gary doesn't have any ability to fight back or object. Normally in this type of story it's a child and they don't take this babysitter lying down. Yeah Gary tries to fight back at the beginning but it barely affects Patrick and he stops fighting rather quickly, you know when the flamethrower comes to town it's almost like the episode is saying that Gary is the antagonist of the episode. You know like those classic cartoons where the baby escapes the house and the babysitter needs to chase them down before they get hurt or something. Needless to say that I do want Patrick to succeed in his pet-sitting but to make that story work correctly you've got to have his torment come through no fault of his own even with the plot mostly cohesive the ending still comes out of nowhere, it's like ending a story about a world war with everyone lived happily ever after, that's..that's just not the way it ends. Gary should not be happy with this to say the least. Unless he's been brainwashed or something. And even in that case, Spongebob should know that his house has been destroyed and think that something is up. Then again, he did in "A Pal for Gary", so maybe I can let it slide. Nothing is funny in this episode except maybe Patrick asking Spongebob if he's going off the grid, in a "What the fuck" kind of way. And it quickly goes to uncomfortable levels from there. This plot can only work when we know that the babysitter isn't going to kill the thing that they're watching, something this episode actively goes against. I don't know who I'm supposed to be routing for. I mean, I know who I AM routing for, but the episode never makes it clear is that the point is that Patrick is a terrible pet sitter, or he's supposed to learn something. The episode points to the former, but the ending points to the latter. Even if those things were fixed, Gary's pain is still too uncomfortable to watch. Beyond the obvious example of Gary nearly getting killed with salt and chased down with a flamethrower. There's a way to be over the top, and there's a way to be sadistic. This is just sadistic. Even in a cartoon, it's disgusting to see an animal be treated this way, at least one that isn't antromofized, because they can't reasonable fight back or object. Although, if you're doing this with a child, you have to still be careful and tone it back. ...And that's the review I should've made in the first place. I should've waited until I calmed down and could address the episode rationally. A spur of the moment anger is an explanation of what I did, but it's not an excuse. There is no excuse. It's one thing to call out the writers by name, it's an entirely different thing to reveal their Twitter feed and almost give a befuddle to a commentary that quite honestly came spur of the moment. Not that I should be calling out the writers personally either. Not only is what I did beyond unfair, but also led to a lot of people going onto the writer's Twitter profile and harassing him, which is the reason why I'm not giving out any names in this apology. It would just rekindle any damage that had already been done and kinda break the point of redoing this review. Not only that, but half of the original review was just spent bashing him. This was inexcusable. And I do want to thank the people who reasonably called me out on it. I could say that I wasn't aware of what an internet falling could do back then, but no I should've known better on every single level; I should've been smarter, I should've been more considerate. Beyond just being mean spirited and strife to a person who didn't deserve it, I've regretting doing similar shit in the past. Also, there's the little ironic fact that calling out a writer like that contradicts some of my own opinions and views. I am a firm believer in death of the author. Calm down, death of the author is a term that means the author's interpretation of his or her own work is just as valid as anyone else's. No less, but no more either. This is one of the reasons I point out unfortunate implications that the writer didn't see. It shouldn't have mattered to me personally what the writer of this episode thought of his own work. Usually the death of the author refers to thing on the more artistic fringe, but it can also refer to character interpretations or how we're supposed to see a character in a particular episode. Here's another belief that just so happened to slip my mind in my outrage: good people can make bad art, and bad people can make good art. Your ethical center has almost nothing to do with how good or bad your art is. Not to mention that actions or products can turn out entirely different than one's intentions. Speaking of that, it's easy to say I was stupid then, but I'm smarter now. We've all said that plenty of times. But I want toy guys to keep me in check directly. Yes, if I do something so stupid as this again, please call me out on it. Keep in mind that I'll still say that the writing or the story of the episode is bad, and the writers shouldn't have done that or whatever, or point out implications that the writer wasn't thinking through. That's what being a critic is, it's what I'm supposed to do. What I'm not supposed to do is call someone out personally or directly. Speaking of coping though, join me next time when I talk about anger issues in my re-review of "Putting your hoof down". Category:Transcripts